Emily Mortimer, the daughter of Sir John Mortimer, is to turn Kathy Lette’s
novel about a middle-class mother and her autistic child into a film.

Emily Mortimer, who will play the mother in 'The Boy Who Fell to Earth'Photo: Mark Sullivan

Tim Walker. Edited by Richard Eden

7:28AM GMT 03 Mar 2012

Having forged a successful career as a Hollywood actress, Emily Mortimer is now moving into film production. The 40-year-old daughter of the playwright Sir John Mortimer has bought the film rights to Kathy Lette’s new novel, The Boy Who Fell to Earth, about a middle-class mother’s coping alone with an autistic child.

“She’s going to play the mother,” Lette tells Mandrake at the Contemporary Art Society Auction Gala, at the Farmiloe Building in Clerkenwell. “It’s very heartfelt, as the book deals with Asperger’s from the mother’s perspective.”

Lette would like to write the script. “I’ve written many screenplays, but they’ve never been made,” the author says. “I did one for Harvey Weinstein that was 14 drafts and then they said, 'Oh, no, this isn’t going to work’.”

Passport to Kent

November’s elections of Britain’s first police commissioners should be lively contests. Expected to stand in Kent is Col Tim Collins, the Iraq war veteran. Opposing him will be Fergus Wilson, the landlord known as “the king of buy-to-let”.

Wilson tells Mandrake: “If I had my way, I would fill in the Channel Tunnel and declare independence from the rest of Britain. I am not going to be a lap dog for central government.”

He is certainly familiar with the judicial system. In 2008, he was fined £565 for using a mobile telephone while driving. His wife, Judith, meanwhile, took a tenant to court in 2009, demanding £3,000 for a new bathroom suite after a cistern lid was damaged. It would have cost an estimated £213 to replace. The case was thrown out by a judge.

Archbishop of York is burnt by The Sun

The decision of the Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu, to write a column for The Sun has failed to impress The Church Times.

“Jesus told the woman caught in adultery to go and sin no more; he did not move in with her,” points out one of its columnists.

Another says: “If they really can’t decided whether to put a crooked police officer on the front page or on the payroll, they are not the sort of people whom an archbishop should be praising.”

Mandrake disclosed on Tuesday that Dr Sentamu’s column may be short lived.